Being born in country X doesn't necessarily give you that country's nationality. It may do, in that some countries confer that entitlement to anyone born within their borders, but some people choose to take their parental nationality irrespective of where they were born. Francesca Annis had a British father and has lived in the UK since she was seven - she's now 65. I think she'd have said by now if she wanted to be Brazilian.

_________________________The Hubble Telescope has just picked up a sound from a fraction of a second before the Big Bang. The sound was "Uh oh".

Since WAI doesn't have a chat board of its own, this is the place to bring up questions about entries in the game. I rely (perhaps undeservedly) on Wikipedia as a major source. Checking there for Francesca Annis we see that it indicates that indeed she is a 'Brazilian-born British actress'. Her mother was Brazilian-French. I've updated her WAI entry accordingly. The X-born tags add some information and variety to lots of similar entries. I try to include the phrases when they are warranted.

I'm sure that eventually some mischievous malefactor is going to edit a Wiki-entry and then use that as a point to have an entry changed. I will not be amused in that case.

WAI entries are NOT set in stone. Many need to be updated from time to time due to changes over time or due to originally incorrect information. I appreciate players pointing out possible problems, so that I can check out possible 'errors' and fix them.

A point that may not be obvious, my database changes evidently don't show up immediately in game play. Current quiz sets are 'cached' and I can't touch them. Any changes that I make in entries will show up in the next days play or later.

I should also add that I continue to collect names for new entries to be added to the game, eventually. I have over 500 entries left over from the last round of additions, but more names are appreciated. There are currently over 9,300 entries in the game database. I am shooting for at least 10,000 total by the end of this year. If you have candidate(s), send me a name or a list of names of people (or in some cases fictional characters, animals, etc.) that you think deserve being mentioned in WAI. There is no need to prepare elaborate descriptions. Most likely they would be greatly edited to fit the game format. If a name alone is not sufficient to identify an entry, then it is ambiguous and ruled out of the game. If you have a really 'obscure' entry, then in that case you can add explanatory material to defend your selection. You never know I might agree with you that X deserves to be in the game for reason Y. Also, if the name already occurs in the game there is no problem with you suggesting it again. One of my first steps is to check for possible duplications.

Having done a little searching on who Francesca Annis is, I became interested in her and found she'd played Lady Jessica in "Dune" (which I think is the definitive Jessica portrayal) and wanted to see more of her work. So, I ordered a copy of "Krull" for that purpose. She'd be happy, I think, that I'm interested in her life work and not care so much if I think of her as Brazillian-Anglo-Franco.

_________________________If you aren't seeing Heaven while you dream, you're doing something wrong.Dreams allow escape from the passage of Time.The ultimate activity is the Dream.

Terry developed the game with that point as one of the cues to use to eliminate possible answers. If there are two or more possible answers with the same occupation (or noted feature, etc.), then neither of those answers can be the correct one. If two 'Equine Triple Crown winner' descriptions appear, then neither of them can be the correct answer. There is a slight hitch to this in the case of occupations (or features, etc.) with several different descriptors. An example of this is singers. Tenors, basses, baritones, sopranos, etc. are singers and if one or more of those tags and singer occurs in one or more other entries then all of them can be eliminated as possible correct answers. I've tried to locate all of the opera singers, etc. and add singer to their descriptions, but I'm sure that I've missed some. I think that Terry has 'equivalenced' the various voices with 'singer', but I'm not positive about that. Boxer and boxing were problems. I think that I've caught all cases of those and changed them appropriately. Also, the two terms may have been 'equivalenced', so that it won't matter.

That said, I've added to the Jean-François Millet description. If I come across an entry with a 'simple' description, I usually try to expand the entry with interesting info, if possible. I think that this makes the game more interesting and educational (and in some cases more difficult).

Thanks for bringing up this point. If you need more explanation or info, just ask.

I had Nicholas Montserrat today. The question gave two of his book titles and that his initials are NM. As this was in the 'hard set', it was a giveaway. I'm not sure what the rules are, but I don't think having the initials is necessary.

I'm not sure why these 'gimmie' entries show up in hard sets, but they do with some regularity. There are currently about 80 'initials are XX' cases of the 9300+ entries in the game database. I started to add these when some of my favorite people began showing up with low percent correct values. I had the option of replacing them or making them easier to guess. I chose the latter path and gave some breaks to newer players. One possibility for why they show up in hard sets is that Terry lets some of the 15 questions in a hard set have any percent correct value. I don't know whether this is true or not. A reason some 'initials are XX' show up in hard sets is that any entry that I edit is thrown back into the hard set pool with a 0.0 percent correct value. This is not the case for Nicholas Montserrat's entry, since I haven't touched it in a long time.

For the time being just be happy that you and the rest of your set got a gift question, although I've managed to miss two 'initials are XX' over time.

I keep track of the initials I use, but there may be other entries in the database that have the same initials as the 'gimmie' entry. Nicholas Meyer in this case could have shown up in the wrong answer selections. I'm sure that Terry doesn't check initials to eliminate candidates for a question. I've seen three cases of this myself over time.

No problem. As I said, I wasn't sure if this needed to be brought up. I suppose it's a case of 'the ones you know are the easy ones', so 'author of "The Cruel Sea"' was more than enough for me. For so many questions, I have to use the 'who am I not' route!